


Sins of the Father

by Tarlan



Category: Cherry Falls (2000)
Genre: Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-09-26
Updated: 2006-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-18 17:00:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/191145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/pseuds/Tarlan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The past comes back to haunt Brent Marken bringing a terrible vengeance with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sins of the Father

Someone was there. He knew it. He could sense their presence like an itch he couldn't scratch; the prickling sensation sending the short nape hairs standing to attention, and yet he had checked through the ground level of the dilapidated house and seen no evidence of anybody still living there. There were no dirty dishes covered in the remains of recently prepared food and piled high in the dirty sink bowl; no smell of fresh laundry hanging to dry, just the mustiness of mildew and rotting wood.

He checked a few rooms then ventured down the darkly lit staircase into the basement - and what he found there sent shivers running up and down his spine. Inside the old rusty cot with its makeshift baby mobile hanging above, was a small lump hidden beneath the stained blankets. He pulled the covers aside and let out a shaky breath that he had not been aware of holding when the lump turned out to be no more than a baby-sized doll.

He glanced around the dirty, cobweb covered basement at the strange rusty implements hanging upon the walls trying to understand why the cot should be there. There were all the signs of the basement having once been used as a nursery but it was no nursery he would ever have wished upon a child. Marken frowned, wondering whether he was being unnecessarily judgmental. Perhaps the gruesome objects filling the damp-ridden basement had not been present while the child had slept here. Perhaps Loralee's parents had not wanted a screaming baby so close to their own bedroom, keeping them all up at night. God knows, as a father he had spent his share of broken nights when Jody was little.

He could not help a small smile raising the corners of his mouth. Thoughts of his little girl always made him smile. She was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to him, and she was his only reason for staying in his sham of a marriage with her lush of a mother. However, Jody was no longer a baby, no longer even a child. She was a young woman and yet, somehow, he knew he would always think of her as his little girl.

Marken shook his head, unable to stop the shake from turning into a shudder as he surveyed the bleakness surrounding him, grateful he had been able to offer his child a better home than this. He climbed back up the stairs and left the house, grateful to feel the sunshine on his face once more, and relieved to breathe the fresh air rather than the dankness of what had been the Sherman home. He stopped by the side of his patrol car and stared back at the house, long and hard, a part of him still convinced that someone was there but he was unable to bring himself to investigate any further. He snorted at his own cowardice, but something about that house made him extremely uncomfortable, as if great atrocities had occurred there and the walls had somehow absorbed all the shame and the pain.

He climbed in behind the wheel and sat for a moment longer, remembering that old cot in the dank basement. He had assumed that it had been for Loralee's child but, for all he knew, the cot might have been for Loralee as a baby, or for a sibling. How much did he really know about her apart from the fact that she had been a weird loner? He laughed shakily. A weird loner that he and three drunken friends had raped one terrible night.

Dark secrets; the past coming back to haunt the present bringing with it a renewal of the overwhelming sense of regret and self-aimed repulsion that had marred his life ever since. What they had done to her had been unforgivable and yet they had gone unpunished by the authorities. He had always assumed that his punishment was having been given a beautiful daughter of his own. A daughter he loved beyond life itself, a daughter he was doomed to worry about every minute of every day as he remembered how he had defiled some other father's daughter all those years ago. Over the years he had heard about bad karma, wondering whether - or when - it would come full circle. How would he ever cope if something terrible happened to his little girl? How would he feel if he returned home to find her mutilated body suspended from the ceiling of her own home, like Annette DeWorlde. This maniac had already attacked Jody, but what if she had died?

What if Jody ever became the victim of a gang rape? Could he dare scream for justice when Loralee had received none?

The squawk of the radio made him jump but he quickly recovered and snatched up the handset, his thoughts still a million miles away as he tried to give answers to his deputy's questions. He acknowledged the message that Principal Sisler wanted to speak to him at the school.

Tommy Sisler; a man who had been his closest friend until that fateful night when they had graduated and left more than High School behind them. He wondered if anyone understood that it was that incident that directed the course of his life, turning him away from his earlier dreams of a Harvard education to become a police officer within the small Cherry Falls community. He took one last look at the deserted Sherman property before he gunned the engine and pulled away, leaving that broken down place far behind him.

In its own way the bad karma had already come full circle. His life had been touched by Loralee's revenge, his daughter almost becoming the fifth victim of the crazed psychopathic woman whose artist-drawn face had jolted him back twenty-seven years. Loralee had long, dark hair with that weird gray stripe. He could still see her if he closed his eyes, could visualize her standing by the side of her broken down car as they drew up alongside. He could still hear her relief turn first to anger and then to fear - while he lay, uncaring, in a drunken heap upon the road.

****

The school was unusually quiet but all the students would have left hours ago, with many of the older ones wanting to prepare for their self-named 'Cherry Popping' party. However, his deputy had told him that Sisler wanted to see him as soon as possible at the school, and that it had something to do with Loralee Sherman. It had taken him just under two hours to drive back from West Virginia and dusk had given way to nightfall by the time he pulled up outside the school. A single car stood alone in a space reserved for the principal, assuring him that Sisler was still waiting for him inside. When he reached the principal's office he was confused by the dimness of the office but, through the half-opened blinds, he could just make out the figure of a man seated behind the desk. However, what he found took his breath away; the sight of his mutilated and very dead former friend stunning him long enough to mute his sixth sense for danger.

When he came to he found himself folded up in the dark with his wrists and ankles bound using duct tape, and with another piece of tape secured across his mouth to muffle any cries for help. He could feel the damp, stickiness of his own blood where it had flowed from the gash on his temple, running down his cheek and neck to soak into his uniform shirt. Where was he? A crate, perhaps? Or a trunk? He tried to move within the confines of the box, hoping to get some leverage in order to try and force up the lid but the fit was too tight.

There was a sense of movement and a low rumble of sound, and he wondered if he was being transported within a car. His guess proved correct when the movement stopped and he realized that what he had been hearing was the muted sound of the car's engine. He cried out beneath the tape as the box dropped to land on the ground with a thud, his head slamming painfully against the inside. More movement followed and he could only guess that the trunk was being dragged up some steps for he could hear the sounds of someone straining against the combined weight of himself and the heavy wood. Marken's head smacked into the side of the box several times more as the trunk was jolted along, sending daggers of pain lancing through him, and he choked back the vomit that rose in his throat, afraid he might drown in it.

Voices. He could hear voices. Oh God! No! Not Jody. He could hear her voice, so very close. He cried out but all sound was muffled by the duct tape and by the dense wood of the trunk.

A sudden tilt and a jagged, bumpy ride ended in a nauseating crunch as the trunk came to a halt at the bottom of what had to be a steep flight of stairs. He could hear Jody's voice getting louder again, could hear her asking someone what was in the truck.

 _Please don't open the trunk, baby! Just turn and walk away. Please get out while you can._

He heard someone fiddling with the lock and knew, instinctively, that it was Jody. His eyes were blinded momentarily by the sudden stab of light but her terrified cry told him all he need to know.

What followed were the longest minutes of his life as he heard his daughter being attacked by the maniac who had murdered Tom Sisler, and abducted him. He could only watch in mute horror as her unconscious body was strapped into what looked like a dentist's chair. Eventually, their attacker turned back to him and Marken saw the killer's face for the first time.

Leonard Marliston? But why?

Marken was dragged out of the trunk and shoved onto a chair, his limbs burning with cramp from being held in such an unnatural, rigid position for so long. When he tried to break free, Marliston backhanded him across the face, and he slumped, senseless, as lights flashed in front of his eyes from the violent blow. By the time he regained his senses he was strapped to the metal seat with his back to the dentist chair that held his daughter.

Tears welled up in his eyes as a mixture of fear, anger, remorse and frustration swept through him. He struggled hard against the bonds that held him so securely but he stopped when Marliston returned from wherever he had been. Marken watched as the man tilted the dressing mirror until he was granted a tormenting glimpse of his daughter; the view giving him far less comfort than having no sight at all. Marliston talked quite matter-of-fact as he sat down at a dressing table and started to apply make-up and false scarlet nails; the image of Loralee gradually building before Marken's eyes. The long wig went on last, the straight, dark hair with its familiar long gray stripe falling over the almost effeminate features of Leonard Marliston.

Marliston looked up expectantly when he heard the sound of Jody stirring back to consciousness, and Marken could only look on in horror as the madman picked up a wickedly sharp hunting knife and moved towards her.

"Please don't hurt her."

He found himself pleading, begging Marliston to let her go and he sobbed when the madman stopped partway and returned to his side. Marliston leaned down, his warm breath raising goosebumps on Marken's flesh as he insisted that Marken tell his daughter all about his dark secret; all about Loralee Sherman and that fateful night.

Even though Jody insisted she knew everything, Marken found himself choking out the whole sordid story. He heard Jody sob as he revealed his own part in it, how they had come back for him after they had taken their turn with the girl. He related how they had undone his pants and shoved him on top of Loralee, even helped him stick his dick into her and guided his movements as he thrust into the almost comatose girl.

"First Tom, Harry, Jim. Came looking for me, and they grabbed me. Threw me on top of her but I knew what I was doing. God help me. I knew what I was doing." He broke down and wept as 27 years of suppressed guilt and remorse flooded from him. "I knew."

Some part of his alcohol-addled brain had been screaming at him that it wasn't right, that her stillness, her lack of fight did not mean acquiescence but still he had continued to thrust into that semen-slicked body. Soon afterwards, he had collapsed into a drunken, satiated heap upon her still-clothed form; the horror of it all not becoming apparent until later when he had started to sober up.

At first he had shaken it off as some kind of alcohol-induced nightmare, but then the accusations had started to fly. Despite her protestations, the Police had disclaimed her cry of rape as she had been found wandering the streets, reeking of alcohol. Only the four of them knew the truth, and even he was uncertain of events as he had spent most of the time lying on his face in the road.

"She loved you."

Marliston spat the words into his face and then he showed Marken the love notes, songs and poems that Loralee had been too shy to send to Brent Marken, the handsome star of the football team. Marliston dropped them with contempt, letting them flutter into Marken's lap and Marken looked up into the insane, deep blue eyes that were supposed to be identical to Marliston's supposed father, and almost laughed. Loralee may have had a crush on him but she had never come close enough to notice that his eyes were green and not blue. He didn't bother to point this out to the deranged man, afraid to antagonize Marliston any further, afraid to point out that he looked more like a young Tom Sisler than Brent Marken.

Part of him had hoped that, somehow, this idea of a family connection to Jody would save her from suffering the same fate as the other kids who had fallen victim to Leonard Marliston and his butcher's knife. However, the view reflected by the mirror showed Marliston was about to carve the rest of the word 'virgin' into the flesh of his daughter's inner thigh. Marken could do nothing, not even scream in anger as Jody keened quietly in pain, for Marliston had replaced the duct tape across his mouth.

They all froze in a horror-filled tableau as the sound of the doorbell ringing insistently drifted down from upstairs. Marliston screeched out his annoyance, ripping the wig from his head, unable to continue with his work while the bell sounded over and over. He covered his female-styled clothing with a satin-quilted dressing gown as stormed up the basement stairs to answer the door, either too preoccupied or too indifferent to care that his face bore eye-shadow and lip-gloss.

Marken knew he had to draw the attention of whoever it was up there if he and Jody were to survive. In desperation he rocked from side to side until he went crashing over into the dressing mirror, smashing it to the floor. The sound of a door slamming followed by heavy footsteps rushing down the stairs brought his head up in fear but he realized it was Jody's boyfriend, Kenny rather than the return of Marliston. Moments later he was almost free of his restraints. However, any chance to escape was suddenly cut off by the menacing figure of Leonard Marliston wielding an ax but Marken had years of self-defense expertise behind him. With his limbs still aching from being tied for so long, he leaped at Marliston and, for one triumphant moment, Marken thought he had gained the upper hand.

His hand jumped to his neck as Marliston stabbed at him, and he fell to the ground, his fingers groping for the knife as Marliston turned his attention back to Jody. Marken drove the knife deep into Marliston's thigh before his fingers started groping for another weapon to use against the psychopathic killer. He wrapped his hand around the cold metal of the broken mirror frame, dragging it across his body and. In his shock, he barely registered the first blow but his last thought as the ax descended for the second time was a small prayer; a prayer that his death would grant Jody and Kenny enough time to escape.

****

Loralee watched the two figures leaving the police station. She saw the smaller one--the darker haired daughter--stare in her direction and quickly hid around the corner while mother and daughter got into their car and drove away. Her Leonard was dead but she held no mother's grief in her heart. She had hated him all his life. Hated the fact that he did not look like Brent Marken no matter how much she ranted and raved to the contrary. She had been obsessed by Brent from the first moment she saw him, had spent hour upon hour writing love poems and letters describing his beauty, his prowess on the sports field, and his soft, sexy voice that would send shivers through her adolescent body. So many times she had tried to approach him but had backed out at the last moment, too afraid to raise her eyes to look directly into his face. Instead she had to content herself with her daydreams, imagining the shade of those beautiful eyes - imagining the feel of those lips upon her own.

She had even been daydreaming of him on that terrible night as she waited in hope of someone turning up to help her after that old wreck of a car had died on her. When she saw the car draw up, and when she saw Brent Marken get out of it, her heart had almost stopped. It was like a fantasy come true except her knight in shining armor had fallen flat on his face in a drunken heap, lying in a stupor on the road while his cronies had poured tequila down her throat. Then, one by one, they had raped her, stripping her of the virginity that she had vowed to keep just for Brent.

Slowly, she had come to her senses as another firm body collapsed across her own for the fourth time, her eyes opening to find **his** beautiful face lying next to her own. She had cried out in despair at this travesty, of her fantasy come true in such a sordid fashion while she lay beneath him, covered by him, with no memory of the feel of him moving inside her.

Her father had called her a slut and her mother had sobbed her heart out when the Police refused to believe that she had been raped, unwilling to accept that these four boys from good families could possibly be responsible for such an appalling crime. The smell of alcohol on her breath and the lack of any discernible bruising had convinced them that she had been willing participant in any sexual encounter, despite her torn clothing. They had even threatened to charge her with making false accusations and wasting police time. Her parents had moved away from Cherry Falls within days, partly because they were too ashamed to stay but mostly because they were too frightened of those rich boys' families pressing counter-charges against Loralee.

She had discovered she was pregnant a few weeks later, and she had given birth to Leonard despite her parents' pleas to have the baby aborted, but in her heart and dreams she had dwelt on the hope that this was Brent's baby. They had thrown her out of their house giving her no choice but to accept ugly Greg Marliston's offer of marriage but had then taken her back when Marliston had failed to provide his wife and her bastard child with a home. Her life had become a living hell, caught between her uncaring parents, a screaming child that refused to bear a stronger likeness to the man she loved and the brute of a man who enjoyed using his fists on her when he wasn't slobbering over her body. She had taken out all of that frustration and anger on the hapless child. If he had been Brent's son then she might have been happy. She would have loved him, would have used him somehow to bring Brent back to her, but her dreams of becoming Brent's wife had faded as Leonard grew more and more like her last image of Tom Sisler.

Loralee drove to the nearby hospital having made sure Brent's wife and daughter were heading for their family home. She went into the ladies restroom and quickly changed into her nurse's uniform, twisting her silver-flecked, long dark hair up into a bun and clipping it back securely. She smiled at her reflection in the mirror, knowing that today would be the realization of all her dreams. The irony was that after Greg Marliston had died she had gone back to night school, studying hard to become a nurse, never realizing until today what a fortunate career choice that had been.

With practiced ease she moved along the hospital corridors until she came to the ICU. A quick check of the board told her which room she needed and she moved towards it unchallenged. With so many victims and their families here, courtesy of her son, the staff were being run off their feet leaving them with no time or inclination to question an unfamiliar face.

When she opened the door she was pleased to find only one presence in the room. Loralee moved to the bed and stared down into a face that had aged and yet was still so easily recognizable. He no longer held the softness of youth but, to be honest, she found his mature, ruggedly handsome features even more pleasing. Loralee picked up the chart and scanned it, checking on his injuries and on the drugs being dripped into his sleeping body.

His neck was heavily bandaged and his right arm and shoulder were encased in plaster from where he had been struck by an ax, the blade having broken the collarbone. Details in the local paper had hinted that he had managed to soften the blows using a piece of broken metal from a mirror frame; the maniac--her son--having left him for dead as he chased after the daughter and her boyfriend. The damage was still considerable and Brent had lost a lot of blood by the time the paramedics had reached him, but they had managed to save both his life and his arm.

Her face screwed tight in hatred as she gazed upon his injuries. Leonard had done this to him and she cursed his name. She had been given a child of Satan spawned by a devil instead of a cherub borne out of her union with an angel. Loralee reached out and brushed the sweat-dampened locks of blond hair from her angel's forehead before leaning over to press her lips against his.

"I'll never let anyone try and take you away from me again, my love. We were always meant to be together."

She kissed him again, her eyes closing in pleasure, her senses filling with the intoxicating scent and feel of him beneath her. She heard his soft moan and pressed forward insistently, her tongue parted his lips to dart inside and taste the very essence of him. He moved beneath her, head rolling to one side and she pulled back in time to see the long blond eyelashes flicker. His eyes opened, and her own widened as those long fantasized deep blue eyes were revealed to be a startling shade of green. She sighed at the wondrous sight, feeling his breath on her face as she stared deep into his beautiful, confusion-filled eyes.

"Where... am I?"

His voice was soft and husky with pain but it rolled over her like an old familiar friend.

"Safe, my love. Safe."

She kissed him again and then smiled as recognition reached his eyes.

"Lora... lee?"

"Everything is going to be all right now, Brent. I'm here and I'm never going to leave you again."

She pulled away from him until she was standing upright, and then she drew a hypodermic from her pocket, slowly uncapping the thin needle. She did not notice his fingers depressing the call button that had been placed near his uninjured hand.

"There's enough in here for both of us. We'll be together... forever, my beloved."

Loralee picked up the IV line and forced the needle through the plastic tubing.

"What's going on here? Who are you?"

Loralee whipped her head around, her face transforming from love-filled wonder to psychopathic rage in seconds as she confronted the intruder. She wrenched the hypodermic from the tubing and screamed in fury as she launched herself at the other nurse. They fought viciously, the contents of the bedside table crashing around them, sending fragments of glass scattering across the linoleum floor. The IV stand rocked from side to side and then toppled, the bag exploding as it landed on a large shard of glass sending splatters of blood in all directions. Upon the bed, Brent Marken cried out as the IV was ripped from his arm.

The sound of running feet joined the shriek of alarms and buzzers, and then all went deathly still and silent. From his vantage point on the bed he saw Loralee stand up and sway towards him, the hypodermic needle with plunger depressed sticking out from her breast. She raised a hand, pleadingly, towards him.

"Brent? My love?"

He could only stare in horror as her eyes rolled back in her head, her mouth gaping obscenely as her face contorted with pain. He cried out as she collapsed across his body, his own pain sending him spiraling down into darkness.

****

 **Epilogue:**

Brent Marken stood silently amongst a fresh set of graves. This was the first opportunity he had to come here for he had still been in the hospital, in the Intensive Care Unit, when all the funerals were held. He had been released from the hospital only yesterday after spending almost two months cooped up within its walls. Thinking back over these past weeks, he realized that he barely remembered that first week, recalling only a blur of pain and horror as the full weight of the past settled upon him, quite literally in the case of Loralee Sherman herself.

His eyes moved over the large area set within a low white picker fence where the families of all the victims had buried their loved ones together, joined by their shared grief. He looked at each headstone in turn. The names were familiar - all of them - but the grave he knelt down beside was Tom Sisler's. The fingers of his left hand trailed over the cold headstone as he said goodbye to a man who had once been his closest friend, a man he had known since they were children... a man he had avoided contact with since that terrible night 27 years earlier.

He wondered, briefly, how their lives might have turned out if they had not been tainted by that one act of brutality, but the past was the past. It was not something any of them could ever change.

If he looked over to his left then he knew he would see another grave kept separate from the rest; Loralee Sherman and her son, Leonard Marliston. Buried together.

The wind gust across the cemetery and he looked up at a sky that mirrored his own inner turmoil. The dark gray clouds promised that more rain was on its way, reminding him that there were still issued to be resolved, that he had still to atone for the sins of his past. Marken hauled himself back onto his feet, grunting in pain as he jarred the healing wounds. He turned away from Tom Sisler's grave and walked slowly towards the lonely grave that had been set apart from the others. There had been a great amount of commotion from the local people when that grave had been dug and filled. Nobody wanted the mother and her murderous son to be buried near their loved ones and no one, except the priest, the gravedigger and a local reporter, had attended the actual funeral.

Marken stopped every so often on the long walk, the sharp pain flaring in his arm, shoulder, neck and chest with every step making him catch his breath. As he walked, his thoughts returned to the past month. After the incident at the hospital, he had asked for a paternity test to be carried out on Marliston even though he was convinced that Tom had fathered Loralee's child. However, he needed to have that proof in his own hands; he needed to see it written down in black and white.

The result had shocked them all, and Marken's response had shocked them even more. He had collapsed in hysterics and they had been forced to sedate him for his own good.

Loralee had kept a journal detailing her twisted, unrequited love for him, filled with her venom for the child she had so wanted to be his. She had blamed that innocent child for all the pain and humiliation she had suffered in her life, slowly turning Leonard into the demon spawn she believed him to be. However, the final laugh had been on her for the paternity test had proven that he, Brent Marken, had been the father after all.

Marken stopped beside the already unkempt grave of the son he had never really known. He remembered the soft voice and the pleasant face of the English teacher who had been able to quote Plato and poetry with such passion. A teacher who had been well liked by his students; who had been well liked by his own daughter.

 _May God give you the peace you never found in life._

The inscription seemed apt as both mother and son had spent most of their lives as tormented souls.

"Daddy?"

Marken turned slowly, his eyes softening as Jody walked towards him. He waited until she was standing beside him, silent and unmoving. Neither of them spoke even though it had been a few days since they had last seen each other.

Once he had left the hospital, Marken had moved out of the family home. With plenty of time to do nothing but think, he had realized that he had already wasted too many years with a woman he didn't love, knowing that their sham of a marriage was slowly destroying Marge as she consoled herself in the bottom of a glass. He had only married her so he could put the terrible memories of 1973 far behind him, although he could not regret the flesh and blood result of their ill-conceived union who stood beside him.

He sighed as he felt her small hand slip into his own, partially remembering an old quote, of how the sins of the father shall be visited upon his children. He tightened his grip on her hand, squeezing gently as he mourned the loss of her innocence, and she squeezed back, affording him some comfort. It was only now, as he stood by her side in front of that lonely grave, reflecting on the lives that he had damaged by his drunken actions so long ago, that he truly felt that the past might finally be laid to rest.

THE END


End file.
